


Howl at the Moon

by Captain_Exasperated



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: F/M, Mute Link, Platonic Relationships, Post-Canon Fix-It, Probably won't be that good but here's hoping, There's not enough Midlink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 14:04:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14498622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Exasperated/pseuds/Captain_Exasperated
Summary: After the events of Twilight Princess, Link bonds with Ilia, goes about his life, and sinks into depression. Not as dark as it sounds.





	Howl at the Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, so this is my first fic that I'm publishing. I'm hoping it's good, and that you enjoy it. If I get alerts for comments, I'll be sure to reply to any - and I'd greatly appreciate them, including constructive criticism.

The first night without her, Link howls and howls and howls, crying out his grief to the unresponsive moon.

It’s unfair, he thinks. It’s bittersweet, he thinks. It couldn’t be any other way, he thinks.

Ilia, for someone who spent so long unable to remember him, who spent so long apart from him as he grit his teeth and staunched his bleeding wounds and traded in baby fat for scars, still understands him more than anyone in the world.

The others all see the dullness in his eyes, the grimness on his face, as a side effect of the hero’s journey, as a scar like any other, but Ilia has always known him well enough to understand that when a goat gored him or he broke an ankle from a nasty fall, he would walk it off, laugh it off – she understood that it was no different for a spiked ball wielded by a suit of armor or the fangs of a skeletal dragon. The other villagers treated every scar like it was sacred, but Ilia would sit with him beneath the stars on nights when he could keep it together and point to a scar, and he would act out exactly how he got it, and she would laugh and gasp and cry.

When Link is able to pantomime time traveling to an ancient temple where he managed to nearly crush himself with a giant statue when he swung a magic rod recklessly and she doubles over with mirth, and when he gives a performance of his final battle and the desperate struggle to save the world and she watches transfixed, Link swells with pride that he might just be the best wordless storyteller in all Hyrule.

Ilia will always be by his side, he knows, and he loves her loves her _loves her_ , but things have changed. His feelings for her are… deeper. When he growls and screams from a pain piercing into his lupine heart on one terrible, terrible night, she is the only one who knows, somehow, that the _untouchable great hero_ doesn’t _need his distance_ , and she breaks his lock with fists that have never seen a real fight but wouldn’t back down from one, and when she learns his secret he nearly cries from relief.

It’s _Ilia_. It’s like she knew all along, and all his doubts about being called a monster melt away when she recognizes him in an instant.

She holds his hand under the stars some nights, she pets his head on the worse ones. When he starts pacing around on peaceful days, lacking a threat to respond to, she understands and starts learning the sword, and spars with him in the woods, and she is fierce and she gets stronger every day, and convinces him that he can still protect the world.

The other village people are wonderful, and he cares about them, and he loves them, and they are his family and always will be, but there are parts of him they can never understand – the warrior who slew bokoblins and dragons and false kings and an evil god, the wolf he hides from them, and…

Ilia understands. She always understands. And he loves her and loves her and loves her but…

Ilia is not _her_. He loves Ilia, but he loves holding her hands under the stars. He loves sparring with her, pantomiming his adventures – the ones he won’t show to the villagers most of all, the ones where the fear and pain are too close to his heart. He loves fishing with her, travelling Hyrule and showing her the sights. He trusts her. He loves her.

But Ilia is not _her_.

Ilia jokes with him, but she does not mock him with an impish grin that hides a regal smirk. Ilia fills the silence, but she does not talk enough for the both of them. Ilia watches the stars with him, but not with that complicated expression on her face, the melancholy of beholding another world’s beauty.

He has pantomimed Midna for Ilia, a sardonic, wry imp who grew into a hero – or maybe the hero, like the princess, was always there. When his acting fails her words, he writes out a script, half-remembered snippets of conversation.

Ilia, as delighted as she is by Midna’s antics, as much as she smiles when Midna finally realizes that the daylit realm is worth saving and all her affection for its hero shines through, as much as she cries when Midna seems to perish and cries even more when she survives – Ilia never asks where Midna went. She understands.

Link loves Ilia. But not the way he loves Midna. Link and Ilia have become closer, so much closer, but it is a different kind of closeness - Ilia is not _her_.

Somewhere, scattered across the desert sands, is a mirror. It’s broken beyond repair, it’s shattered into so much sparkling dust. Somewhere, on the other side, is a princess who stayed an imp at heart and an imp who was always a princess.

What happens when old age or some other adventure claims his life? Link’s memories always return at the end of his quest, just a little. They’re hazy, and the exact order – there doesn’t seem to be one. But he is the Hero of the Winds, and he will move on to a new Hyrule with his greatest ally and his greatest foe when all is said and done.

But what of this one?

What of her?

His best friend does not hold a piece of the Triforce. He spent an adventure with her. That was all. He wanted a lifetime with her, and she cut it short for the safety of the world.

He has saved Hyrule so, so many times. He has sacrificed countless lifetimes for it. He is the Hero of the Winds, and it is his duty, and it is his sacred mission, and he is the only one strong enough, but why? Why can’t the goddesses pick someone else? To hell with this world. There will be another Hyrule. There always is. Can’t he be selfish with just this one?

Link hates himself during these moments. Selfish, weak, _cowardly_.

The days pass.

Nothing changes.

Link’s life seeps away in a year, and then another, and then one more. Moments stand out – he has tea with the princess, and thinks that in another life they were surely good friends, and they grow close in this one too. He teaches the village children a little swordplay, a little archery, but also patience and how to think before they act. He catches the goats when they break out, and when a few monsters attack the town, he cuts them down with ease. And he and Ilia sit together countless nights, and the villagers whisper and grin knowingly and incorrectly, but neither one minds.

But he still wakes up a wolf, howling and sobbing, just as often.

Three years. Three long years of a dull, cold, bruise-like sadness punctuated with moments of melancholy joy. On the third anniversary of that final fight, he resigns himself and sits in his little house – he could have a mansion, after all he did, but he’s never wanted riches for anything other than the ways they can be used and for their fascinating quirks – and he waits. If he waits long enough, the water his body holds will fail him, and the next Hyrule will arrive, and he can get back to his purpose, and forget this, and stop moping uselessly.

It’s easy. It’s just like going to sleep, for him. Death has never fazed him, and the fuzzy memories that tell him he will be reborn, a hero for the next world – the hero that world deserves, a hero instead of a useless lump of grief – well. Fear isn’t a word in his vocabulary, if only because his worst, the one he didn’t even know he had, has already come true.

Link really should have, in hindsight, expected Ilia to break down his door.

“Get up.”

Link doesn’t move.

Ilia pulls him out of bed. She drags him down the ladder, which he frankly didn’t think was possible for somebody with only two hands, and out to the little lake by the bridge.

It’s funny, he reflects, that just as the villagers are only dully cognizant of Ilia’s growing strength in the sword (she’s _good_ , after three years), all of them would be a little shocked to see this side of her. She’s stronger than anyone knows, even herself, and even Link, who knows her better than anyone in the world, is a little shocked when she pulls out a practice sword and swings at him.

His sword is out in an instant – the speed the Hero of the Winds draws with would make an eyeblink jealous – but she follows through with such _force_ that his parry, slowed imperceptibly by the time it took to draw his sword, is battered away, and a split second later she’s swung again, so hard that he can _feel_ the purple in the bruise forming on his shoulder.

Link roars and leaps forward in a fluid, swirling movement – a tornado kick, but with the flat of his sword, faster than the eye can follow, and is shocked when the impact travelling up the flat of his blade is the clack of it on wood, not flesh.

Ilia throws a swift kick toward his gut, but Link is already drawing his shield, and yet the awkward placement of his arms means he has to step back and absorb the shock rather than step forward and strike again.

As he finally regains his balance – it takes all of a tenth of a second but he feels slow for that – she’s dashing towards him, and he swings the flat of his blade toward her recklessly striking form – only for her to _jump_ over him, swinging downward in a flip. He’s so surprised he barely parries her, and she lands in a roll, and turns to face him.

“You’re getting sloppy.” Her voice is like steel, like a thunderstorm, nothing like the warmth with which she usually speaks.

And she’s right. As she dashes again, he can sense a dozen little things wrong with his stance, and she swings the practice sword so, so fiercely, but he’s ready this time and catches it on his shield – but goddesses, his arm’s going to bruise – and steps forward, growling, bringing the flat of the blade toward her temple-

She drops into a crouch and _punches_ him.

He stumbles back, gasping for air, and brings his shield and sword to bear-

She’s already beside him, and a roundhouse kick from behind and the swing of a sword rush towards him from opposite sides. He ducks enough to avoid being struck full in the face, but the kick sends him sprawling.

Links rolls, stands up and-

She’s charging. He grits his teeth, yells, and charges to meet her.

She swings into the clash so hard that the master sword, in his one-handed grip, flies out of his grasp.

“You’re!”

She flips the blade back towards his head.

“Weak!”

He catches it with his shield.

“Without!”

She knees towards his gut, and he steps back in the nick of time.

“ _Her_!” roar Ilia and his heart, and as she swirls into a swing with every bit as much power as the Hero of the Winds, his shield is battered away.

She kicks him in the solar plexus, hard, and he falls flat on his back.

It’s over.

He’s lost.

“Goddesses above.” Illia falls to her knees, dropping her sword from her quivering hand. “That is the most exhausting thing I have done in my life.” She draws in a shaky breath. “The second most exhausting thing. The first is putting up with you.”

She helps him up. He’s still dazed, and frankly has no idea what the hell is going on or why tears are welling up in his eyes.

“Link,” she says, pulling him into a hug, “I’m not an idiot. You never told me what happened to Midna after the last fight, but I can guess.”

“This world can handle itself. You’ve done enough. You deserve to be happy. _Go find her_.”

And Link sobs and sobs and sobs, and his best friend – after _her_ , because nobody will ever be _her_ – she holds him.

The journey is hard. There are _things_ buried deep underneath the desert. Ganon, Link is coming to realize more and more, is only Hyrule’s biggest threat because he is _recurring_. There are terrible creatures with more clawed arms than he can count in the dim light that ambush him and fight with techniques he has to follow with instinct rather than eyes, there are puzzles that boggle his mind in their scope and their complexity and their deadliness, and there is a grinning god that calls him unworthy and warps the fabric of the universe as they duel, swords holy and blasphemous erupting in sparks with every clash, in the final chamber of a tomb older than civilization, deep as the center of the earth.

And every second is a step closer to her, and he knows she will mock him for caring so much, he knows she will make light of his journey, claim she could have done it in half the time, he knows she will say he stinks of blood and sweat and dust, he knows she will shake her head and say he’s an idiot to have come all the way here.

And he knows the proud tears and impish, wide grin that will prove that the princess is the same old imp who was always a princess.

And he knows that it will be worth every single step.

 

 

Epilogue:

The captain of the royal guard, with medals and honors glinting in the twilight, each one earned and deserved, rides a horse that will never be satisfied saving the world just once back into castle town. She starts, finely tuned reflexes reacting as she feels something amiss. She looks around, scanning every detail expertly for potential danger, and sees the sky flashing black with a disconcerting howl before fading back into twilight. All around her, people mumble and whisper and point, shivering with fear. She just laughs with disbelief and joy.

She turns on Epona and gives the princess a grin that is quickly matched as comprehension dawns.

“I’m going to miss him.”

**Author's Note:**

> Again, hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
